Was There Enough Room in the Ark?

Genesis 6:14-15
“Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.”

One of the common arguments used by skeptics against the biblical account of the Flood claims that Noah’s Ark could not possibly have accommodated all the millions of species of animals.

The first problem with this argument lies in the word “species.” Species is a modern human classification. Genesis says that Noah was sent “kinds.” The biblical “kind” includes many species. For example, the dog kind includes: foxes, fennecs, wolves, jackals, colishé, and coyote as well as the domestic dog. All these can interbreed and have fertile offspring, meaning that they were originally one mating pair. This applies to all species and drastically reduces the number of animals on the Ark to a more reasonable figure. That figure is further reduced when we realize that one-third of all animal species live in the sea and had no need to be taken on the Ark.

But let’s not forget that the Ark was the largest ship ever built until the 1860s. It had a capacity of one and a third million cubic feet – about equal to a train made up of 522 railroad stock cars!

So when the facts are all considered, even a generous estimation of the space needed on the Ark tells us that there was room not only for Noah and his family and all the animals, but also for plenty of food.

Prayer:
Dear Father, I ask that You would put to confusion all attempts to deny Your truth. Make Your people well-armed with Your Word and how it applies to all parts of life. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Notes:
Photo: Black-backed jackal, one of the dog “kind”. Courtesy of Raoulduke47. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.